A group of Lubbock neighborhood associations asks the City to make an equitable comprehensive plan – will Lubbock listen?

For many American cities, the biggest obstacle for creating an equitable comprehensive plan for the future is overcoming systemically racist actions of the past. This is certainly true in Lubbock, Texas.

City plans and actions beginning in 1923 essentially forced black and brown residents to live in certain parts of the city and then surrounded them with polluting industries that put their health at risk. The consequences live on to this day. All the industries which must report to the EPA for releasing toxic chemicals into the air, land, or water are within or border majority African-American or Hispanic neighborhoods.

Residents of East Lubbock are demanding that the city consider this history and its consequences as it drafts and releases its 2040 Comprehensive Plan. This plan will dictate what kind of the community the city will create: whether segregation and environmental injustice will continue and grow; or whether Lubbock will be an inclusive and equitable community where all people have what they need to live a good life.

In its public comment to the Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee regarding Lubbock’s upcoming 2040 Comprehensive Plan, the Alliance of East Lubbock Neighborhood Associations challenges the City to deal with its discriminatory past head on and ensure equal access to the American Dream for all citizens. The Alliance is represented by Legal Aid of Northwest Texas’s Community Revitalization Project and worked closely with Texas Housers.